Monday, 26 January 2015

Why do we limit
ourselves? Why do we tend to say 'I can't' quickly before we say 'I can'?

It is something we
all suffer from and it is quite possibly the one main contributing factor in
limiting out potential, limiting what we can achieve. Why do we do it?

There are many
different theories, but all of them point to the fact that we can do something
about it if we truly want to, which is good. That we often don't try because we
feel we can't do it.

Some of us limit
ourselves because we've been told, time and time again that we're no good. And
we start to believe it. Maybe in primary school, or in a club, we try
something, fail at it, and then someone says we're no good, so we believe them
and stop. When someone we respect, someone in authority, tells us that we are
no good at something, we tend to believe them, particularly when the evidence
points to them being right.

At school, I was
told that I would never really amount to anything; a senior teacher told my
parents that there was little point me doing hard A-levels as I was most likely
only going to fail them & maybe I should look at a safe local job for after
school. Something inside of me told me that was wrong & I knew I wanted
(& was able to) achieve more, but if I'd not thought that, I would not be
here now.

The trouble is,
there is a myth that we only use a small part of our brain & we can't do
anything about that. Even scientists in the past felt that there was a limit on
our use of the brain; the concept of IQ (Intelligence Quota), formedby psychologists just over 100 years ago, was
a test used to identify students in France who would not succeed in the newly
created compulsory education system. It has since been used to identify people
capable of being forced into the army in the first world war and is still,
today, used in the USA to identify whether or not a criminal is 'intelligent
enough' to have known that what they did was wrong when they murdered someone
and so deserved the death penalty or not.

And in popular
culture, there's an amazing film; Lucy, with Scarlett Johansson as the lead
role, who accidently takes a new drug which expands the use of her mind to
100%. A great film, but one that reinforces the limit to our use of our brain
without help from drugs or stimulants.

As science develops,
we are more and more able to understand how our mind works; it is clearly still
by a million-fold, the most complex object in the world to date and each and
every one of us has a unique set of patterns in the billions of neural pathways
that make up our mind, our memories stored as electrical impulses lighting up
our brains. We can now 'watch' these signals fly around the brain in real time,
and watch parts of our brain light up as we perform simple tasks. We know
better than ever what parts of our brain do now and how they link together. And
we know one important thing now that our ancestors of 100 years ago didn't:

That the brain can
grow.

We can develop our
brain, just like any muscle, and make it better; in any way we want. We don't
need to look to drugs like the character Lucy, in order to do more with our
brain than we do now.

So we do not have
innate intelligence. You are not, intrinsically, cleverer than I am, or better
than me at things. Our ability is not fixed, so if we can't do something, it's
just that we've not learnt how to do that yet.

What's funny,
however, is that we know this in some areas of our life. When we get a 'Game
Over' message on our PlayStation, we don't think we're no good and give up.
Instead, we pick up the controller and click the 'start again' button,
determined to not make the same mistake again that got us kicked out of the
game last time.

The trouble is, we
do have innate preferences; some of us find it easier to work with words than
numbers, some of us work better with images or pictures than words. These are
all subtle differences that make us unique. I am not so good with languages, but
it did not stop me going back to evening school to learn a foreign language
even though my MFL teacher at school told me I was hopeless and couldn’t learn
a language. I am not brilliant, but I can get by in France now. Because I did
not believe that I couldn't do it.

A few years ago, I
was lucky enough to be awarded a scholarship by the US government to visit
schools in New York & Washington (The International Visiting Leaders
programme), where I met some amazing students, teachers and leaders. One school
in particular, in Washington, sticks in my mind - they have a huge sign in the
entrance way to the school, which is seen by students, staff and visitors every
day. It reads:

"If you don't
understand, it's not your fault"

I think this is the
most powerful statement ever. It means that, whatever you are studying,
whatever you are doing, it's never, really, 'Game Over', so long as you are
willing to pick up the controller again and have another go. You will certainly
progress further each time and will, eventually, get there, so long as you
don't give up.

But it takes one
thing that is rapidly becoming a very hot topic in education & society in
general. It's given an American phrase; Grit. Grit is the determination to keep
on going, to not give up. To re-start the game and learn from our mistakes.

Monday, 19 January 2015

On the 18th January, I was honoured to be a speaker at the Microsoft Education Leaders' Briefing; the ELB is a forum for presenting the latest thoughts on the integration of technology and education and they are attended by people from across the globe. We had been invited to participate in this as one of the UK's 6 Global Showcase Schools, identified by Microsoft as being world innovators in the use of technology to change young people's life's for the better.

Below is the text of my presentation:

Good Morning &
Thank you. My name is Andy Howard and I have now been teaching for 25 years! An
awful lot has changed in that time, but an awful lot has remained the same. I
now find myself as Principal of Sandymoor School, one of only 6 UK schools to
have been awarded Global Showcase School status by Microsoft for our innovative
approach to education and the use of ICT in education.

Sandymoor School is
a brand new school; we were founded under the government's Free Schools
programme, a mechanism that allowed schools to be set up in response to local
need and without the control of local government. An initiative based on the
Scandinavian Free School & US Charter School models.

Three years ago, we
opened in temporary cabins, steel boxes bolted together and fitted out with
basic services. It did not stop us having strong ambitions for our students and
we grew. 18 months ago, work started on a brand new building, where I worked with
architects to match our vision and our ambitions. We now have a building that
would qualify for the Internet of Things - a smart building … … CO2 measurement
& Temperature sensors in all rooms,lights that dim if it's bright outside, etc.

We are pretty much
unique - a brand new school, built entirely from the ground up, metaphorically
as well as literally, proposed and founded by 5 local parents, ordinary people,
mums and dads who just wanted to make a difference.

There are very few
opportunities these days to be involved in the start of something as big, as
ambitious, as grand as starting a brand new school! Our founders are still very
much involved in the school, all being on the governing body and very actively
taking interest in their school. The school sits in a relatively new suburb of
the New Town of Runcorn. A twin of Milton Keynes, Runcorn was built after the
second world war to provide housing to the bombed out estates of Liverpool.
Still growing today, the suburb of Sandymoor is the last growth area for the
town. Sandymoor currently has around 900 houses, but is part of the
government's house building strategy and is scheduled to grow to over 2,000
homes over the short term. The vast majority of the homes in Sandymoor are
classed as medium density, higher status family homes & they are very
sought after houses.

To the west of the
school, we have, however, housing estates built when volume was the only
measure for housing and some of the estates within a mile of the school rank as
some of the most deprived communities in the UK.

One of the school's
great strengths is our diversity and our school community. We have students
from all backgrounds in the school and almost all of them local. Over 70% of
our young people live within a mile of the school. In an area of the UK where
social mobility is at its worst, we are an example of aspiration, with high
standards of academic, social and personal development expected from all our
community.

One final piece of
our local setting is our proximity to the world-renowned Daresbury Science and
Innovation Centre; the home of the Particle Accelerator and still a world leader in scientific innovation.

The founders set a
very strong and ambitious vision for the school; to be an 11-18 school,
producing intelligent, employable global citizens that demonstrate social
competence, a desire for learning and respect for each other and the world
around us.

And there is so much
in this statement:

In a world where we
cannot predict 6 months ahead, we are, as educators, trying to do the
impossible. We are having to prepare our young people to do jobs that don’t
even exist yet, using technologies that haven't been invented yet, solving
problems we don’t even know about yet.

And with technology
as it is, we are now living in a global village, with communication around the
world virtually instantaneous, news beamed around the world as it happens and
workers engaged in collaboration with colleagues in almost any continent. How
do we prepare our young for this?

With all of that,
and the world they are inheriting from us, they also need to be more socially
aware, more tolerant and accepting of others than ever before. Xenophobia and
fear is driving a wedge between people and we need to be providing
opportunities for our young to learn from our mistakes and build a better
future.

Now, I am not a
technologist, never have been and never will be. I am an educationalist.
Passionate about helping our young to be the best they can be. And I believe
that the only way we will be able to do this, in our world, is through engaging
fully with technology.

Our ICT strategy has
this as its opening statement:

ICT alone will not
transform learning, but learning will not be transformed without it.

This is their world,
immersed in technology, the world at their fingertips. We need to embrace this
world of theirs and engage with them on their territory.

Blended learning,
where technology is used, when (& only when) it is better than other means.
When it allows us to do things previously unimagined.

Young people, all
over the world, are fundamentally no different to how they've always been; shy,
uncertain, desperate to be different, individual, determined to grow up before
they are ready and ultimately complex, amazing and totally unpredictable.

But they now live
out their lives as much, if not more online, in the digital world. They are the
digital natives, whilst we are immigrants in this brave new world.

However, just
because they are the natives, it does not mean that they will embrace every new
initiative, or 'learn more' just because it's delivered using technology. That
is the mistake that has been made so many times before, with the results that
there are numerous research papers that state that technology does not improve
student outcomes.

In fact, they will
defend their territory as fiercely as any pack of lions seeing off a rival
group. Why on earth would they want to allow into their social world the dull
duty of learning without a fight?

And that's why, I
think, we at Sandymoor are starting to get it right. By being a brand new
school, we have been able to think carefully about everything we have done;
imagine it completely anew and ensure that every element of Sandymoor is fit
for purpose as a 21st Century School.

We start every
planning exercise with a blank sheet of paper and ask the question; what do we
want this to look like, in the modern world. We do not automatically assume
that the way things have been done before are still fit for purpose. Where they
are, we use them, but only after testing them against our vision.

What do we want a
21st century student to do, to be, to experience? How do we help them adapt
their skills to make them accept the use of technology in their world?

And that has to
influence, in fact shape, the whole infrastructure.

First of all, we are
all, now, used to looking up the answer to something at the click of a button,
the swipe of a finger. So a teacher is no longer the gatekeeper of knowledge,
the expert and deliverer of understanding. It is no longer valid to have the
teacher stand at the front of a room, delivering material to students. The
whiteboard, let alone the interactive whiteboard, is redundant, because I can
look up the answer to a question faster than you can write the question on a
board.

At Sandymoor, we
have twin projectors at right angles to each other, which project directly onto
the wall, painted in an ultra-matt, green-tinged cream, which is, according to
research, a much easier surface to read off, without glare from a bright white
surface. And the twin projection system means that the learning experience is
an all-encompassing, immersive one.

There is no
traditional 'front of class', with no teachers' desk, either, which means that
the classroom environment has a much more collaborative atmosphere; my teachers
are very much more 'Guides on the Side', as opposed to 'Sages on the Stage'.

Getting rid of
whiteboards entirely, which in their time replaced the old black chalk board,
is a clear sign that we are starting to use technology to completely redefine
education, rather than mere modification of old habits.

But we also have to
think about what, in fact, the point of school is in the modern world. What
place does the teacher have, now? If they are no longer the gatekeeper of
knowledge, then they do have to adapt completely to a completely different
role, that of guide and mentor, helping the student to find their way, develop
their understanding and grow in independence.

The most
transformational invention of the last 50 years has to be the internet, the
'Cloud', and it is to the cloud that we have looked to ensure that we are
building for the future, ensuring capacity.

Collaboration is key
here; working together, in collaborative spaces, we grow and share and
experience more than we ever can in isolation.

But we always have
to come back to what is most important; the young people we are all doing this
for. How do we ensure that everything we do will help them grow and succeed in
their future, especially when we can't see what their future looks like?

By building a structure, in the cloud, using
collaborative spaces, we ensure that outcomes are clear and impact is strong.
Students work together, with teachers, to learn off each other, learn how to
learn and develop the skills for future growth.

The skills they
need, adaptability, mental flexibility, and perseverance, are all developed in
a curriculum focussed around collaborating in online spaces. Students can bring
in their own devices, regardless of make or model. Our wifi is designed around public
space capacity, with 1-1 infrastructure being not ambitious enough for us (I,
personally, have 4 devices that connect to wifi with me today), so we have a
complex wifi network capable of dealing with any device a student could bring
in and capacity for over 3,000 separate device connections.

We need to meet
students where they are, so one over-riding principle for me is what I call
device agnosicity. Any systems we use in school need to be accessible by
whatever the student will bring in. For us, Office 365 exemplifies this.

Against popular
convention, as I have said, our students have been resistant to embracing this,
but for two reasons;

First of all, as
I've said before, it is trespassing on their territory. We need to tread
carefully, and not assume that they want us in their space. We need to set out
our case, let them accept the need first and foremost. We have done this by
assuming a very business-like environment. All our students have the same
access & expectations on them as my staff. Homework, project deadlines,
meetings, etc., are all set with students via calendar invites. We don’t have
student planners. Communication between staff & student is via email, with
the same expectations for reading and action. There is no skin on our systems -
we don't treat them like children; there is no dancing frog or comic sans fonts
in sight. . . (Did Facebook create a young-person centric version, with silly
characters or simple fonts?)

And then secondly,
we expect them to take responsibility, to accept that they are part of the
solution, that they have to actively participate rather than just be passive
recipients of learning. That is hard work. But it is important, because it’s
about behaviour modification, about teaching them to take responsibility,
whilst there is a safety blanket around them to ensure they don't get hurt.

But they are still
children and while the social domain is very firmly theirs, we need to help and
support them, which means we need to be active in their domain. Tools such as
Yammer, in the Office 365 environment, are perfect for this, bringing the social
into the workplace.

There is also,
however, the flip side of the coin and that is the teachers themselves.

We need to ensure
that we don’t forget that there is a behavioural management change required
here too. If we are going to truly instigate transformation, we need to
support, encourage and if necessary cajole teachers into learning new ways to
be as well. There is always a workload increase when something new is
implemented, but it is important to ensure that there is a clear pathway to
smarter not harder ways of working.

Ultimately, however,
it needs a strong vision, clearly focussed, with the modern student at the
heart, to ensure that we truly transform education. And it does need
transformation, if not revolution, across the world - we are failing so many
young people and politicians talk about percentage improvements in test scores,
without really recognising that every percentage point that fails is a real
student who learns that they are not a success. . .

Technology will not
transform learning, but without it learning will not be transformed.

Monday, 12 January 2015

This phrase is one I
have heard so many times, in so many places; when I tried to look up its
origin, there are so many different versions of it that it's hard to place it.

And no wonder why -
it is a phrase with so many different interpretations.

If we first of all
look to the horror of the awful incidents in Paris, where so many innocent
people, going about their ordinary day, found themselves cruelly targeted by
cowards (to call them terrorists is too good for them). There were examples of
good people not doing nothing and trying to stop the deaths, but in the face,
literally, of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of trained people, there is
not a lot anyone could have done.

But terrorism
spreads, like a disease, when people fear others because they are different.
When tolerance is lost, we put our barriers up and look to fight.

Whilst it is still
early days, the three people who felt they needed to take up arms and kill
cartoonists and shoppers in a supermarket did so because they felt they did not
belong in the society where they grew up. And that is at least in part because
people turned their backs on them. That is no excuse for what they did and they
were turned into killers by cold, manipulative terrorists, who seek to stop our
way of being, who feel that our lifestyles are offensive to their God. But if
they had people they called friends in their society, would they, could they,
have turned their guns on people who looked like their neighbours, their
friends?

All that is
necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

And of course,
there's our response - do we say that, because it happened in France, that it
is of no concern of ours? The news is full of the increased risk of similar
attacks now in our country, and in every western country. There are,
apparently, dozens, if not hundreds, of people in this country alone who feel
isolated, excluded, left out, to the pitch where they look elsewhere to be made
to feel welcomed, to feel at home. And then they find those people turn them,
twist them, and send them back to cause havoc and fear.

Why? Our society is
one of the most unequal in the world, with a larger gap between those who
'have' and those who 'have not' wider than almost anywhere.

In our compassionate
society, where the principles of looking after those who need help are
enshrined in law, it is our duty to not
do nothing. Because people need our help.

Bur sometimes fear
drives us to do nothing. Sometimes, we turn our back because we don’t want to
get involved, or because we don’t want the bother.

All that is
necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

But what about
closer to home? Here in school? All that is necessary for evil to flourish is
for good people to do nothing.

As a school we
believe, with a passion, that each and every one of you is important, equally
and has a huge potential inside of you and that it is our duty to help you
realise this and release your potential. Doing nothing is not an option to the
staff who work here, because they all believe that it is an important thing,
the most important thing, we do. And they most certainly do not do nothing. . .

What about you? I've
spoken time and time again about the importance of you being on board, on the
journey. Part of the solution. . .

When we work
together, as a community, we help and support each other to be bigger,
stronger, better than we ever could be on our own.

And yet time and
time again, things go wrong. People fall out. Fights happen. And no-one wants
to get involved. Because of the outdated feeling that 'we don't tell'. 'No-one
likes a grass'.

It's actually so
alien to me, that idea. If there is someone who is making another person's life
miserable, and you know it, but don't tell someone? How is that, in any frame
of reference, a good idea? It is, in fact, the living example of the phrase I've
been quoting:

All that is
necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

But being a grass is
seen as a bad thing. How about I re-phrase it in another light: Telling someone
about something wrong is a moral duty - it is helping to make the world a
better place, make the school a safer place. It is rooting out 'evil' & turning
the spotlight on it.

Maybe, just maybe,
in Paris, if a neighbour or someone had said something about the men who felt
they could stop free speech by killing cartoonists, then maybe those men and
women, those fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, other people's children would
still be alive today, getting on with their lives, maybe sitting having a
coffee, planning a treat or holiday.

All that is
necessary for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.

When you think twice
about doing something or saying something when you see something bad going on,
think again and do the brave thing, the moral thing, the right thing & make
a difference

Monday, 5 January 2015

Like most people, I set myself some resolutions for 2015; one of them was to 'blog' more, starting with my weekly assemblies. So I am aiming to post online my Monday assemblies shortly after the students have heard them... Here is this weeks:

New Year Resolutions

First of all, welcome back & Happy New Year! I hope the Christmas break has provided you with the chance to rest and spend time with family. New Year is a funny festival, traditionally a time where we reflect on the year gone and make some resolutions for the year ahead. Pretty much the whole world now celebrates this marker on the 1st January, to the point where it's difficult to believe that it could be anything else. But I read this morning that there is a Scottish island, the remotest part of the British Isles, that still celebrates festivals dating back to ancient Norse times and so will celebrate their 'New Year' tomorrow!

And, of course, there's the famous Chinese New Year, an ancient calendar that is based on the Moon's cycles, rather than the Sun. This year, the Chinese will be celebrating their new year (or Spring Festival) on February 19th and we will move from the year of the horse into the year of the goat.

However, whenever it's celebrated, around the world, we mark the turning of the Earth in its continuing cycle around the Sun. Since we last celebrated New Year, we have travelled 586,920,000 miles (From http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1865762 ).

In our dim and distant past, we would meet together to celebrate the fact that the days are getting longer again and we will not be thrown into continual darkness - the time around early January marks the point at which it is just beginning to be possible to notice the longer days without modern instruments to time things. Rituals would be performed (including at various times, human sacrifice) to celebrate the fact that Spring may be just round the corner again; in our modern times, our rituals include fireworks and standing in groups singing a song in an old Scottish dialect that hardly anyone knows the words to, let along the meaning…

But at the heart of the festival lies an important theme; that of renewal and hope. New Year stems from a time when hope was hard to come by at this time of year, with no electricity to light lamps or double glazing to keep out the cold winter storms - imagine spending this time of year in a tent or cardboard box, homeless…

So we celebrate the fact that we have done more than survive the year, that we are different to who we were a year ago. Hopefully better, definitely older.

A lot happens in a year - 12 months ago, we were still firmly in the temporaries (now completely gone, with virtually no trace of us ever being there), and the Foundation 1 students were still in Primary School, looking forward to their SATs. . .

In the world, we lost a plane in Malaysia, still missing today, with all 239 people on board still missing, Oscar Pistorius (the famous para-olympian, with the nickname of Blade runner), was arrested and convicted of killing his girlfriend, we lost one of the greatest comedians of all time, Robbie Williams, and Ebola became a disease we all suddenly know about, having ravaged through several West African countries, killing well over 8,000 to date.

What about your year? When I think about mine, I can easily think through a huge number of highlights, and feel that it has been a very good year. I hope you can too.

And then, finally, there's the tradition of setting New Year's Resolutions. A whole industry has grown around this, helping us set them and keep them. Most of the New Year's Resolutions set, if you take the headlines in the papers and magazines, focus around getting fitter, slimmer or in other ways more beautiful. And according to studies, well over 90% of resolutions made last week will be forgotten or broken before the end of this one.

Which is a shame, because the habit of setting yourself goals and targets to improve is a very good one. As I have said before, doing nothing, not changing, not growing, is not an option in this modern world - if you stay put, stay with your current ways of doing things and being, the world around you will leave you behind.

So I have set myself some resolutions; some to do with being healthier, and maybe getting a bit fitter this year, and some to grow my mind.
I was interviewed over the holiday by Microsoft & the interview features in a blog, written by the Vice President of Microsoft, responsible for global education, Anthony Salcito, Vice President – Worldwide Education : http://dailyedventures.com/index.php/2014/12/23/andrew-howard/

One of my resolutions is to blog more, including these assemblies, on the school's blog - check it out (if you don't have anything more interesting to do…)!

When setting any targets, it is important to make them very clear & specific - something you can visualise and see happening. It's also important that they are measurable - just saying to yourself that you will work harder is not a good example, therefore - imagining yourself working harder is not a good, motivating image, and it's not something to be easily measured.

It also has to be something attainable, or achievable - something you can actually achieve. There is no point aiming to achieve something that is completely out of reach - there's no point, for example, in myself aiming to look like George Clooney by the end of the year. . .

It also has to be relevant - something that is going to be useful to you, and achievable in a specific time frame.

So, what are your new year's resolutions? Pathways students - you are now well on the road of your examinable courses, with some very important work being completed this term. Foundation 2 students, it's Options time, where we will be asking you to make firm your choices of courses for next year. These are choices that will impact the rest of your lives and need to be taken seriously. Foundation 1 students, this term, this year, sees you completing a huge chunk of the foundation subject material, setting the ground for the rest of your school careers.

Time can never be stopped and our lives move forwards, whether we want it to or not. We grow older and the world changes around us. We have a choice to make; to fight the change and to try to hold back time, or to embrace the fact that the future is ahead of us and move forwards, determined to make a difference.

What will your New Year's resolutions be? One of our students, Jonathan Follett, has taken up flying & has his first lesson this coming weekend - if he perseveres at this, he will obtain his flying license before he gets to drive a car! Well done Jonathan!!